Tag: HumanCities Collaborative

We were delighted to see the recent news that Bloomberg Philanthropieshas launched the “What Works Cities Initiative”a three-year, $42 million (USD) effort to support mayors and local leaders in 100 mid-sized U.S. cities with the goal of helping city leaders “use data and evidence in decision-making”.

The orientation towards “decision-making” (convergent thinking) is one that is often seen in the still emerging civic innovation arena today. As innovation practice leaders we notice that such terminology is not exactly on-target from a methods and skills perspective. As practioners working with organizational leaders everyday we recognize that decision-making and innovation-making are not the same thing. Lets not assume they are. Decision-making is only one part of the changemaking/innovation cycle.Continue Reading..

Civic innovation is a subject that is near and dear to us at Humantific and we digest a lot of material being generated in the media on a regular basis. There is no question that interest in the subject of civic innovation continues to rise. As practitioners working in the real world with client organizations we don’t always get a chance to comment on everything we see in the media.

We do see momentum building towards a better understanding of the many challenges surrounding civic innovation and thats good news. As various interest groups weigh in to contribute perspectives the landscape of what is known and what is in progress, ie not yet resolved becomes more clear.

Often being presented under different themes, one common thread across many civic innovation initiatives are the stated goals of achieving/building adaptability, agility, flexibility, resilience, fluency, fluxability, adaptive capacity. As an objective this is not so different from many large business organizations today operating in a continously changing world.Continue Reading..

Building on our work in progress Humantific CoFounder GK VanPatter shares insights on operationalizing civic innovation capacity building today. Humantific is proud to be a founding member of HumanCities Collaborative a new multi-firm consortium created to help civic leaders operationalize human-centered civic innovation in tangible, understandable and scalable ways. Continue Reading..